Energy Crisis
A wave of heat and light washes over you from behind, buffeting your body about and forcing you to extend your wings strenuously just to stay upright in the air. In front of you, a good distance away, large smoking craters are about all that is left of the Methussian army. You cannot be sure that you nailed all of them but hunting each and every one of the survivors down would be far too much hassle. Furthermore, you had sensed a brief resistance to your spells as they hit – some of the mages had managed to conjure up protection, showing that your unexpected attack had not been so unexpected after all. Behind you, however, something more concerning just happened. At the same time your spell had landed, a massive explosion had occurred within the walls of the fortress.
You return and land, surveying the damage. The ground seems to have pushed itself outwards, jagged hills of rock surrounding a gaping wound in the earth that has bared a dark, fathomless abyss. “My Master, are you alright?” shouts Runde with concern as he trots up to meet you. He is met with silence as you attempt to scrutinize the aftermath of the explosion. There are traces of magic left behind, akin to the stench of blood lingering after a thorough massacre. No doubt Methussian sorcery was involved somehow, but from your prior experience with their wizards you had not come away with the impression that they could pack so much power in their spells.
“Runde, who is in charge at the moment?”
“Boss would be-“
“Ah, he’s dead,” you say curtly. Runde’s face begins to twist up but he composes himself quickly enough. “Who’d be second-in-command?”
“That… that would be me, Master,” he bowed. “I think.”
“Well, perfect. Organize something and get this place cleaned up, will you?” you say.
Acknowledging your orders, he moves towards the rest of the goblins and begins to bark out commands. It looks like the formerly shy goblin scholar has grown somewhat in your brief absence. Looking down at the hole in the ground, you sigh, suddenly missing the calm and restful days of being trapped in stone. You reluctantly step off the edge and drop into the hole, using your wings for a careful, controlled descent. Your halo provides enough light to see by as you fall and you decide not to use an Orb of Light. A short way down, you begin to see strange pipes and tubes embedded into the rocky surface, and the hole begins to widen. Further down, and you are unable to even see the walls of the far side anymore – even the light from your halo does not reach out that far.
Finally, you spot a small ledge sticking out from the near wall. You glide down towards the ledge and find yourself on the edge of a ruined chamber, clearly artificial from the smooth and polished surfaces. Within the chamber every inch of space seems packed with the pulverized remnants of strange contraptions. A beautiful elfin-eared woman with messy brown hair is kicking at a particularly large piece of equipment angrily, screaming a flurry of crude curses that your spell has no problem in translating.
“Hello, Zayan,” you greet her.
She turns to you, pushing up her quartz glasses. “Huh. Oh. You’re awake, Erdrick,” she mutters. Bitterly, she kicked the metal again only to yelp slightly as she stubs her foot at a wrong angle.
“You don’t seem particularly astonished to see me,” you say, stepping closer to her.
“I am slightly surprised that you are up and about, and without a stitch of clothing on your person at that, but forgive me if I must moan a greater loss at the moment. Damnable Methussians! Those barbarians!”
You look around the room. “What was this for?”
“Remember those ley-lines I once spoke of? I discovered more of how they worked. Though my research is incomplete, and is now set back even further thanks to those Methussian fools, I learned enough. Think of them like… like blood vessels that conduct energy all over the world. The concentration of these ley-lines are particularly rich under Grahferde because there is something that both feeds off and regurgitates the energy within the ruins beneath. We’re managing to tap into it with our magnatite-based machinery like parasites, sucking up the excess and repurposing it for our needs. It’s what has been powering our golem army. Up till now, at least.” She frowns and then screams again. “They blew it up! Those maniacs, they blew it all up! I can’t believe their nerve!”
“How did they manage it?” you ask. “Did they manage to invade this far into the fortress?”
Calming herself back down, Zayan says, “Some of them, I think. I was not around to see it. Well, whoever did it definitely did not walk out alive anyway. Most of this damage was due to the feedback from the machine’s destruction, and I am sure I placed enough anti-magic tampering barriers to prevent any manipulations from a distance. I am not sure about the details of how but really, that is not what concerns us at the moment. The problem here is that we are facing a big problem with our energy reserves. In simpler terms, Erdrick, that golem army of ours won’t be functional for much longer. They constitute the bulk of our forces and even though I am not a strategist, even I can see the problem with that.”
You can definitely see the problem with that too. “Surely we can just rebuild and tap the power of… wait, you said you were using the power of something. Do you know what that something is?”
Zayan shrugs unconcernedly. “Not at all. I don’t know a thing about it except that it’s energy, waiting to be used.”
“Don’t you think that’s a bit… risky?”
She snorts and laughs. “Oh, what are a few risks in the name of science? We don’t even know if it is a sentient thing. It seems to be living, but trees too are living things and we don’t fret about chopping a few forests down. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
As a former hero who has done his fair share of delving into dungeons, you are not very certain about continuing to use mysterious energy from the deep. Still, it seems that you may have no choice if you want to continue down this path. “Very well. So what is stopping us from rebuilding?”
“The explosion collapsed the conduit we were using. To establish another one, we would have to dig deeper, and that would require deeper exploration of the ruins to establish a new spot for a conduit. The last expedition was stopped when our goblins were devoured by a mass of black tentacle monsters that came pouring out of – oh, don’t make that face like we messed up, I properly sealed the entrance and nothing bad’s happened since!”
“Black tentacle monsters, you say?” you sigh, putting your hand over your face.
“They wouldn’t be any threat to a being of your caliber. The princess certainly took care of them easily enough, though to my utmost disappointment she smashed them so thoroughly that I was unable to procure any specimens. We decided that it was not worth the manpower to delve further however, since we could create the conduit on this level. That feedback from the explosion just now cut off the ley-lines reachable from this conduit from the source deeper down. Theoretically it would regrow with time, but that is a process that takes centuries. No, we have to go deeper.”
“Aren’t there any alternatives?” Spending your time fighting tentacle monsters does not feel like how you would like to spend your days so soon after being set free.
“Well, you are a pretty good source of energy yourself. I could use you to continue powering the golems, but that would only be sufficient to upkeep maybe a few thousand golems without sacrificing your own health. Anymore and we would start to see considerable side-effects to your physical and mental ability.”
Without missing a beat, she continues, “We could also drain other living things to power the golems, but there just aren’t enough beings even in the entire kingdom to maintain the number of golems we have at the moment. Considering the number of tributes we can feasibly draw upon, including captives obtainable by force… we would have to cut the one million-strong golem army down to a tenth of its size. One hundred thousand. With more time I could improve on their energy efficiency but unfortunately this is as far as we can get at the moment. Shamefully, I must admit I was spoilt by the endless energy, so much that I did not think of focusing on reducing the golems’ energy expenditure…”
You wince. Given the already porous nature of your defence even with such overwhelming numbers, reducing the numbers that much would definitely leave your forces wide open. “I see. How much time do we have before our army falls apart entirely?”
“Unfortunately they struck at the worst possible timing. You’d almost think that they were monitoring our magnatite crystal resupply schedules to pull this off… or maybe they did, I don’t know. We have a week before the furthest golems run out of power, three weeks before all our golems shut down.”
That does not give you much time. At the moment you are in conflict with both Methuss and Dijeh, so without a sufficient army you would lose territory fast. Though you do have to wonder – Rin was the one who made the conquests. Do you absolutely need to keep that much under your control?
***
In order to maintain your golem army, you need to search for an alternative source of power:
A. You will clear out more of the ruins so that Zayan can reestablish a conduit with which she can power the golems. It might be a hassle, but it is a necessary one if you want to maintain your advantage in numbers.
B. You will power the golems by yourself, though it would drastically reduce the number of operational golems.
C. You begin taking in prisoners by force from all the places under your current rule, draining them to empower the golem army.
***
You are also now trapped in a two-front war, which is not the ideal situation at all. Though you are unable to do anything about Dijeh immediately, there are other steps you can take. To try and salvage the situation, you decide that your next move should be to:
A. Teleport to Yuiria and force a quick end to the war with Methuss while they are still unaware of your awakening and capabilities. If that requires you to demolish the royal palace along with all its inhabitants, so be it. Rin might have enjoyed playing Dark Lord by holing up in her fortress but you do not share the same proclivities.
B. You let go of the territories conquered, withdrawing back to the borders of Grahferde and its surrounding forests in order to reduce the drain on your resources and also allowing you to reconsolidate your forces and strengthen Grahferde’s defenses.
C. Attempt to recruit more human forces under your banner. Rin had not ruled with a particularly cruel hand, but she had made no effort to court the humans under her thumb either, which was why her forces had to rely primarily on the golems. If you can manage to organize loyal militias in each village or town able to defend themselves, this will help reduce the numbers needed in the garrisons.